WHEN TEACHERS BULLY THEIR STUDENTS

Guilty of wearing this racially insensitive t-shirt to a "Democratic school"

Imagine a classroom situation in which a black female student is wearing a Barack Obama t-shirt and her white teacher comes in and berates her because of the t-shirt. The teacher tells her that she isn't allowed to wear a shirt like that in a "Republican school" and that she needs to take it off immediately. When the student refuses, the teacher then attempts to deface the shirt by scribbling on it. The teacher then encourages the other students to ridicule the girl and even goes out into the hallway to gather more people to join in the torment. And then imagine the amount of national outrage that would cascade down on the teacher, the school and even the community.  Imagine the round-the-clock coverage of the story by the mainstream media.  There might even be protests.

Or imagine it's an openly homosexual student wearing a t-shirt promoting same-sex marriage and the teacher comes in and tells her she can't wear something like that in a "heterosexual school."  Or perhaps a Muslim student wearing a t-shirt featuring words in Arabic in a "Christian school."  The outrage over the story and the coverage of it would be massive.

Now understand that something like this actually did happen recently in a classroom but don't expect much if any national coverage by the mainstream media.  That's because the real victim is a young white girl and her offense was simply to wear a Romney t-shirt to school.  This heinous act on the student's part was apparently too much to bear for one of her teachers who behaved exactly as described above.

Samantha Pawlucy, a sophomore at Carroll High, said her geometry teacher publicly humiliated her by asking why she was wearing a Romney/Ryan T-shirt and going into the hallway to urge other teachers and students to mock her.

“I was really embarassed and shocked. I didn’t think she’d go in the hallway and scream to everyone,” Pawlucy said. “It wasn’t scary, but it felt weird.”

Of course there's really no valid reason for the teacher to even ask such a question.  But giving the teacher the benefit of the doubt let's stipulate that the question itself is not necessarily problematic.  However, the evidence indicates that the intent of the teacher was entirely coercive and inexcusable.

The teacher then allegedly called a non-teaching assistant into the room who tried to write on the t-shirt with a marker. She was allegedly told to remove her shirt and she would be given another one.

During the incident, Samantha Pawlucy said the teacher told her that Carroll High is a “Democratic school” and wearing a Republican shirt is akin to the teacher, who is black, wearing a KKK shirt.

The teacher could not be reached to comment. Fernando Gallard, district spokesman said an investigation is ongoing. He said the student had the right to wear the t-shirt.

Samantha Pawlucy said she felt publicly humiliated by her teacher and was initially unsure how to respond.

"I just laughed because I was nervous," she said.

Her father said she was visibly upset when she returned home, but at first did not want to tell her story, for fear of retaliation from the school — suspension, being moved out of the class, or expulsion.

The student said she also felt shunned by classmates because she reported the incident to the principal.

"I have some friends that won’t talk to me anymore because of it," she said. "Because I told the principal what happened…they’re mad at me."

Not surprisingly, Samantha has been thoroughly intimidated and is reluctant to go back to school due to threats from classmates.  We've all done our time as teenagers and high school students.  All of us can remember what it was like, even under the best of circumstances.  It's difficult enough to resist the inevitable peer pressure and the tension of conformity versus personal identity. When bullying is injected into the situation, especially from an adult authority figure, the damage done can be significant.  Richard Pawlucy told a local radio host what happened next:

When his daughter went back to class she hid in the bathroom until the teacher left. He said other students were taunting her.

"Her classmates were telling her –'how can you do this to our teacher?'" he recounted. "Why don't you like Obama? We all like Obama – why don't you like Obama?"

See how the issue of the t-shirt was quickly turned into an issue of Samantha's racial insensitivity.  Open support of Romney was immediately and deliberately equated with dislike of Obama. And given the context, the implication was clear: that Samantha's support of Romney was rooted in her dislike of Obama, which must be the product of "racism."  And yet it was the teacher who instigated this abuse and it was the teacher who provided the racial context.

Of course the bullying and deliberate humiliation of a 16-year-old girl in front of her classmates is bad enough.  Obviously there are restriction of free speech concerns as well.  But what about the sheer ignorance and bias of a teacher who would claim that the school was a "Democratic school" and that a "Republican shirt" was no different than a "KKK shirt."  

Leaving aside the obvious irony of a Democrat loudly equating the GOP with the KKK, the incident begs the question: Would the black teacher have reacted this way if it had been a black student wearing the "Republican shirt?" Why the reference to the KKK in the first place?  Was the t-shirt merely an excuse and a cover for the teacher's racial bias? 

These are the kinds of questions that would definitely be asked if the student was black and the teacher was white.  Unfortunately, our society is still suffers from the cancer of political correctness.  This disease inhibits the kind of intellectual honesty required to treat abusive situations such as this with an equal amount of concern, regardless of the race of victim and perpetrator.

The situation is reminiscent of another case of teacher-on-student bullying that occurred last May at a school in North Carolina.

In a nearly 10-minute YouTube video shot by a student in the classroom, Tanya Dixon-Neely, a social studies teacher, told students criticism of the president could lead to jail time.

"Do you realize that people were arrested for saying things bad about Bush?" she said of former President Bush. "Do you realize you are not supposed to slander the president?"

"As a social studies teacher I cannot allow you to slander any president in here, past or present. If that's the case, somebody could say negative things about the Tea Party."

Once again, this incident involved a student that was white and a teacher who was black.  Was the teacher motivated, at least in part, by racial animus?  Did she assume that the boy's criticism of Obama was due to "racism?" If so, why leap to the conclusion that a white student can't criticize a President who is black for any other reason than "racism?" It seems clear that the very mention of an ominous legal term such as "slander" was designed to intimidate and silence the student.  In general, frivolous accusations of "racism" and "slander" represent efforts to repress dialogue, not promote it.

It's hard to decide which is more disturbing: an adult who feels that it's okay to go on a rant against a teen-aged student for committing an apparent thoughtcrime or a Left-wing teacher who can't resist letting her political bias interrupt the classroom setting or a social studies teacher who is entirely ignorant both of the student's Constitutional rights and the laws pertaining to "slander." 

It is stories like these that cause so many people to long for real education reform.  It is stories like these that cause people to crave alternatives to the status quo, as depicted in the new movie Won't Back Down. It is stories like these that make a thinking person question the reactionary system of state employees and public sector unions that allow such incompetent and disgraceful behavior on the part of adult authority figures with regards to the minors placed in their classrooms.